Soupstock - October 21, 2012 at Woodbine Park

"The event will feature more than 200 top Canadian chefs, including Jamie Kennedy, Anthony Walsh and John Higgins, who will concoct original soup creations to celebrate the Melancthon region’s rich agricultural, cultural and natural history."

Going to respond to your original thread since you have the date in the title. I am also planning to go to this. Foodstock was an awesome event last year. So looks like this one is free to get in but you pay $10 for 3 soup samples. Bring your own bowl, spoon and napkins. Musicall entertainment too. Recommended on side to take public transit, bike, walk because of limited parking in the area.

You can also buy bowls and spoons on site, with part of the proceeds going to the cause. They're expecting about 50,000 people so expect lots of line-ups and ridiculous crowds. Several top musicians performing as well, including Jim Cuddy and Jesse Cook. Parking will be insane so take transit, walk or cycle.http://www.soupstock.ca/

I'm wondering if each serving is one ticket, or depends on the chef / soup like the Wine and Cheese Show where one wine might be 3 tickets, etc.? I ask because I bought 10 tickets for hubby and I and not sure if that is too much or too little. Doesn't really matter much though now because I see the sales online have ended.

It will be 3 bowls for 10, and there really isn't an advantage to have bought online since you still need to go to a ticket booth to exchange the online ticket for 3 physical tickets. Maybe they will have an express line. See you all out there

We spent 3.5 hours there and had a great time. What a perfect day for it. Loved the space, tons of people but not too crowded. Between the 2 of us we tried a lot of soup. My top choice was Woodlot's Potato Leek with Mushroom duxelle and hazelnut oil. OMG fantastic!!

I was only marginally excited about going, but I tried 9 different soups, and enjoyed every one! Line-ups were not bad at all, usually 1-2 people in front. There were huge line-ups for Susur, but I skipped that since not in the mood for sweet and sour soup. Petit Thuet was there giving out free samples of bread with bear sausage. Delicious! Parking not too bad, I snagged a free spot very close on Coxwell (but was there at 11:00am.)

The mood was great, vendors all very cheery. There were a few too many potato & leek, or soups with pumpkin, but generally very inventive ideas.

One surprising thing was very few soups had noodles. I would love to see a much bigger Asian presence next year. I saw no pho, ramen, etc. Although there were some minestrone and soups with dumplings.

I thought there could have been more variety too but I was reading after the fact that the intent if you will, was to use farm fresh ingredients - hence the potatoes, squash, leeks popularity.Mr. MG was jonesing for some mushroom soup but we never did locate any.

Beets was very prevalent as well. I feel it was a bit of a cop out by some of the "vendors" to use the cheapest ingredients since they were donating the soup. The absolute worst offender and worst soup I had was the supposed "oyster" chowder from Tide and Vine. Absolutely no oyster to be found and the soup was bland. It was merely warm milk with some potatoes and carrots. Their portion was half of what anyone else was providing.

The best soup for me was the Turkey Stuffing soup. I don't know who the vendor was because my friend found it. Second runner up was the corn chowder with jalapeno and smoked oyster from Oyster Boy.

My favourite was from Frida - first they placed a little baguette sandwich stuffed with shredded pork in the bowl, covered it with a tomato/chili soup, crumbled on some queso fresco and then you could add your own condiments such as guacamole, black bean dip, a couple of different salsas. Great mix of flavours and textures. I would go to Frida for this soup, but I don't see it on their menu.

For the record, farmers offered a bunch of produce for donation to the event and I saw a video via Soupstock Facebook page where restaurants were picking up donated ingredients at the Brickworks one day.

I really enjoyed the event. I didn't fine that there was much of an issue with lines (a few short lines here and there (longest line was probably Michael Stadtlander's... I had his soup last year but decided not to line up this time around). Last year at Foodstock they were pretty much cooking everything on site vs. having this pre-prepared and just heating/serving made things go faster. It will be hard to top Foodstock as my all time favourite food event but Soupstock had a great attendance, tasty food, plenty of ticket booths (and roaming volunteers selling them), all in all a great event.

Re: my favourite soups, the "lobster cappuccino" from Rock Lobster had great flavour. French onion soup (topped with cheese and french fries) from One 99 in Orangeville was great too (The chef from where is one to keep an eye on, had his food at another event when he was with a different Orangeville restaurant, I forget his name now). I had a few spoons of Ted Reader's chilli (great, but I didn't try the ghost pepper sauce!), 7 Chef's soup with cow heart and other things was tasty too. I pretty much enjoyed everything I tried. I bought a bunch of tickets figuring that even if I didn't use them all it would go to a good cause but I ended up using them :)

Logistically, the only thing I would suggest for future versions is that they either have "waste water bins" for the rinse out of bowls or that they put a sign up asking people not to rinse there bowl right by the drums. It was getting really muddy right by the drums and a lot of people didn't have the common sense to just fill there bowl with a bit of water and move on vs. spending 5 minutes with the water running and clean there bowl right there (ok, slight exaggeration but my only annoyance and due to guests vs. organizers!).

Bottom line, if this group ever does a fundraiser/awareness event in the future, I highly recommend that you attend based on the last two events being in my top 5 of food events ever.

Interesting, One 99's onion soup was my least favorite. The frites were good, as was the cheese crouton thing but I found the soup itself way to sweet and thick. We ate the toppings and ditched the rest :) Each his own, eh :)

Statdlander's soup was very nice. We arrived early so no lineups at all to try his. I loved his display too - he nailed it.

Oh and what about Boehmer's fish soup? Did anyone try it. Very good but I was a little squeamish about the cartlidge. Not my cup of soup I guess. For me, the consistency was offputting.

Wanted to try the lobster cappacino but the lines were crazy so we had the lobster hot and sour instead which was very nice - cant remember whose that was though.

I will def return next year! Loved the location. A few tables would have been nice but that's just me.

Impressed with how well everything ran given the crowds. Some long lines but lots of great stuff being overlooked. One of the longest lines was for Reader's chili while right next to him three people in line for Carl Heinrich / Richmond Station.

If the organizers are reading this my suggestion for next year would be to have the restaurant / chef name at the top of the tents so you could see it. In many cases it was very hard or impossible to see who it was, and the paper map did not list everyone. I found some didn't even have their name on the table or perhaps it got moved.

Good suggestion. I am not sure why some chefs showed up with no signs. I know it was very windy out but a lot of booths didn't have clear signage to indicate what they were serving or who they were. Seems to be pretty common problem at these type of events.

Hmmm. That onion soup from One99 was the best soup I tasted. Yes, it was a bit sweet but that just made it all the more tasty for me. Wasn't as impressed with Statdlander's. There was a really good chick pea puree but I forget who did it.

"I feel it was a bit of a cop out by some of the "vendors" to use the cheapest ingredients since they were donating the soup."

The "vendors," as you call them, are chefs/restaurateurs/small caterers, most of whom barely eke out a living. Asked to provide 200 LITRES!!! of soup to an event, yes, they will consider the cost of ingredients!

I'm not asking for lobster bisque but I think there can be more creativity than borscht or potato & leek which were very common. Even though it's for a charity, it's also a marketing exercise to promote your restaurant. You're not helping entice people to your establishment by putting out boring/bland/uninspiring dishes.

I agree, it was worth the $$ and besides that, it was a charitable event but to be clear, it wasn't actually a BOWL of soup in most cases. I found, esp as the day wore on, the portions got much smaller. And depending on the popularity, lines, etc most we're a small ladle size portion but that's ok because we were able to try more without getting overly stuffed.